Get to Know Opportunity Record Types

Learning Objectives

In this project, you’ll:

• Learn the uses and benefits of record types.
  
• Map the lifecycle of an opportunity to stages and sales processes in Salesforce.
  
• Create an opportunity stage.
  
• Create a sales process.
  
• Create a field and page layout on the Opportunity object.
  
• Create an opportunity record to test the record type for earned revenue.
  
• Customize Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) rollup fields to exclude an opportunity record type.
  

Salesforce for Nonprofits includes both integrated platform solutions and managed packages. This badge covers Nonprofit Success Pack, a managed package. To learn about other Salesforce for Nonprofits solutions, see Salesforce for Nonprofits Basics.

Before You Start

Before you complete any steps in this module, make sure you complete the hands-on challenges in Set Up a Nonprofit Success Pack Trial for Trailhead using the same special Developer Edition org. The work you do in the hands-on challenges here builds on the work you complete in that badge.

• Set Up a Nonprofit Success Pack Trial for Trailhead
  

Review the Basics of Record Types

Salesforce can track many different kinds of information, sometimes on the same object.

To use a single object for different business processes, you need to use a record type. A record type helps you organize and gather different data on a single object. In this project, you create a record type on the Opportunity object.

The Opportunity object tracks revenue, and can use different record types to track different processes and types of transactions. As a Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) user, you’re probably familiar with the six included opportunity record types that track common types of nonprofit revenue and gifts: donations, grants, in-kind gifts, major gifts, matching gifts, and memberships.

Each of those record types has its own sales process, fields, and page layout to help guide users to a completed gift.

But what about other types of revenue and business processes not included in NPSP, like ticket sales, revenue from programs, or merchandise? Nonprofit revenue sources are as complex and varied as the organizations themselves. 

In this project, you work through how to set up a record type for those situations.

Meet the Example Organization

To illustrate the practical application of this project, you follow the example of the nonprofit No More Homelessness (NMH).

NMH works to make sure everyone in its community has a safe place to live and enough to eat. The social-services group works on housing for its program participants first, but also provides career counseling and placement services to help the people it serves.

Now NMH is launching a staffing service to help program participants develop skills, make money, and find long-term jobs. The nonprofit plans to contract with businesses that need short-term or temporary employees and services. The companies pay NMH, which then pays program participants and provides them with training and wraparound services.

To get the plan off the ground, NMH needs to set up a new opportunity record type to track its transactions with client businesses.

Explore Record Type Stages and Benefits

Record types offer a few practical benefits.

• Record types help you categorize revenue in reports and dashboards.
  
• Each record type can display only the fields you need for that type of revenue. For example, NPSP only displays fields related to the fair-market value of goods on the in-kind gift opportunity page layout because that information is relevant there and not on other record types.
  
• Picklist values can differ between record types so it’s easier for users to pick the best options. For example, different record types can have different opportunity stages.
  

The possibility of different stages is among the biggest reasons to create record types for the Opportunity object.

Opportunities are action- and process-oriented records. The Stage field tracks progress through the steps in the process from beginning to end. Each Stage value represents an ordered step in the process.

With each step, the probability of a donation—or other transaction—becomes more likely. In Salesforce, you track this likelihood with probability values assigned to each stage on an opportunity. Probability values can be set to defaults and then adjusted as needed to help forecast revenue with more accuracy.

Salesforce uses probability values to forecast revenue using this formula: opportunity amount * probability = expected value. For example, a $100 opportunity with a 30% probability to close would have an expected value of $30.

Stages are grouped into sales processes, which filter Stage values that can be assigned to different record types.

In this project, you create a stage, sales process, and record type for the example organization to set up its new staffing services program. You start with stages and sales processes in the next unit, but first you need to complete Set Up a Nonprofit Success Pack Trial for Trailhead and use the same special Developer Edition org for this project.

Click Verify to make sure your special Developer Edition org for this project is configured properly with NPSP installed.

Resources

• Trailhead: Set Up a Nonprofit Success Pack Trial for Trailhead
  
• Salesforce Help: Create Record Types
  
• Trailhead: Customize a Sales Path for Your Team